Aluminum Sliders

Local fabricator here in socal.

 

Something like this will protect more but seeing where the damage occurred on your truck, maybe it wouldn’t have helped in that incident.

 

Interesting...
I'm a welder/fabricator/machinist and had given some thought to aluminum sliders vs steel. Alloys and heat treatment and effects of welding with aluminum are a lot more complicated than steel, even if the steel is chrome-moly. I can weld and fab my own (either metal) so for me, the overall cost is relatively insignificant. Meaning: my cost for a home built set of aluminum sliders would be real close to retail on steel sliders. Will I do it...nope. Sliders need to SLIDE and I think steel is the best choice. When I made skids for previous trucks I used steel. It works.

I will replace my OEM front skid with the aluminum TRD item because it looks cool. Everything behind that will mostly likely be steel, including the sliders.

Will I build my own steel sliders?
Probably not...in my old age I've learned it's often better to just buy it/get it/move on (opportunity costs). I built a set for my Dodge and it was a real pain in the ass if you don't have fixtures/jigs for production. Yeah, fuck that.

 

Dawelda You made a very good point, “Sliders need to slide”. And steel is the best choice.

Off roading in our Tacomas is not about trying to save weight, it’s about coming back home in one piece.

 

Titanium!?
How much will that price be?!

I may have considered aluminum but for them to save significant weight they would have to be a lot weaker.

I expect I will seldom need a slider in reality, but they I’ll work whenever I do…

In the meantime they sure get used by my little guys as steps.

 

Those sliders seem to stop pretty short of the wheel well.

 

Agree most of may never see our rock sliders in action. Most of the places that I had gone off roading in Hawaii, only two times I had my steps rip off in the last thirty plus years.

But it may only takes one time for the damages to rocker panels to happen. “Prevention is better then a cure.”

Rock sliders are not only to slid over rocks , the kick outs on sliders will save your truck from trees, plus a good point to lift your truck for flat tires, etc.

 

An aluminum part can have the same strength as a steel part and still be lighter. That’s why aluminum is popular for building things like aircraft and bicycles.

However, I think most of aftermarket aluminum bumpers and skids are not designed to be as strong as their steel counterparts. Many manufacturers offer a 3/16” steel skid and a 1/4” aluminum skid. Without knowing the exact alloys being used it’s hard to know for sure, but I suspect the aluminum would need to be 3/8” to be equal in strength to the steel.

Steel has some other properties that make it a better material for truck armor, for example hardness, malleability, impact strength.

Adding weight to a truck has many negative consequences, so aluminum makes sense to me for how I drive my truck.

One final thought… my aluminum skid slides right over rocks. No issues. However, I cannot say that steel is not better in that regard.